Pokemon Go: Mobile Gaming As an Industry

Pokemon Go is the first augmented reality mobile game to use GPS. Originally a division of Google, it was spun off and is now run by the co-founder and CEO, John Hanke of Niantic, Inc.. Niantic is part of Nintendo. Pokemon Go raised $25 million from eight investors at a $150 million initial valuation. It has been one of the hottest mobile games of 2016 with over six million downloads in the first week, and nearly $200 million in revenue in its first month according to Apple App sales statistics. It is estimated that Pokemon generates $10 million per day. Super Mario Run was just released this December, also by Nintendo, and has already been downloaded almost three million times from the Apple iTunes App store. Super Mario Run generated five million in revenue globally in the first 24 hours. The big question for 2017 on this topic: what mobile app, if any, will surpass Super Mario?